62 no one in authority would read more than one page on any subject; there- fore, he and Wilmers attempted to condense the essence of the whole af- fair into a document of that length. On the appointed date, Dean and Wil- mers set out by automobile for the Pardo Palace, Franco's residence out- side Madrid. En route, they were met and escorted by a troop of cavalry that had a ceremonial glister: the hooves of the horses were painted gold. At the palace, they were duly received by Franco. About a year later, Dean de- scribed the meeting in a letter to Mar- tIn Arta jo, as follows: On July 21st, Mr. Wilmers and I had the honor of being most graciously received by His Excellency, the Chief of State. At the conclusion of the audience we left with the official who had acted as interpreter [Dean did not speak or v"''rite Spanish] a one-page note sum- marizing the essential points of our ex- pose. In this note we pointed out that the value of the assets, adjudicated to FECSA for ten million pesetas plus the face amount of the Barcelona Traction bonds, exceeded the price by thousands of millions of pesetas. [Dean later told a SOFINA man that when Franco had been told how much money March had made on the deal, he had acted startled, and had asked for a repetition of the figures.] We repeated our sincere belief that the most just and honorable settle- ment of this matter could best be achieved with the coöperation and under the auspices of the Spanish State. We ex- pressed our hope that this coöperation toward a settlement would be forthcom- ing, and stated our willingness, on grounds of equity and national justice, to hold available a part of the enterprise for acquisition by the Spanish State on terms the prime consideration of which would be the interest of the Spanish economy. In other words, Dean and Wilmers were offering Franco a compromise: If they could have theIr company back, they would agree to the nationalization of some fraction of it at a bargain com- pensation price. Dean's letter ended, "-His Excellency was kind enough to tel] us that the matter would be studied. " Wilmers' account of the meetIng supplements Dean's, and on the most essential point-the tone and substance of Franco's reply-differs from it. Wilmers says, "A Franco aide inter- preted while Dean talked in English about Panmun jom. The Generalissimo appeared to be interested. Then Dean brought up Barcelona Traction. He summarized the situation, and I added a few words. When we had finished, Franco said quite coldly-as you know, it was said that a visit with him felt like a cold shower-'This is a questIon be- tween private parties. Unfortunately, the shareholders of Barcelona Traction have not always acted very wisely.'" And that, it seemed, was that. The following spring, by which time there was no evidence that Franco planned to do anythIng about the matter, Dean returned to Madrid and saw Martín Arta jo again. Once more, he went back to New York empty-handed, this time with the sense that all his client's re- sources In Spain had been exhausted. But a few months later, just as things looked darkest for Barcelona Traction and its owners, there was a favorable turn of events. In December, 1955, SpaIn was finally admitted to member- ship in the United Nations, of which the chief judicia] organ is the Interna- tional Court of Justice, at The Hague, the presumptive Supreme Court of the world, existing to hear and judge dis- putes among nations which cannot be settled by other means. Under the United Nations Charter, acceptance of the International Court's jurisdiction is optional to members; and Spain, in joining, did not accept its compulsory jurisdiction. (Nor, in the absence of fulfillment of various broad conditions, has the UnIted States accepted it, to this day.) However, Spain and Belgium in 1955 had a commercial treaty dating back to 1927, and that, combined with Spain's new U.N. membership, had in the opinion of International legal au- thorities the effect of mandating SpaIn's acceptance of a challenge in the In- ternatIonal Court by Belgium. Quick- ly realizing that in the new situation SOFINA-SIDRO might he able to per- suade the Belgian government to take the Barcelona Traction case to the In- ternational Court, March's lawyers, led by a formidable advocate named Antonio Rodríguez Sastre, undertook an enterprise that for outrageousness was fully in the March tradition. Travelling individually or as a team to the leading European capitals, they k.'V$ attempted, sometimes with success, to engage the leading international law- yers to write opinIons, for an appro- priate fee, on the Barcelona Traction case. The resulting opinions, not sur- prisingly, tended to favor March's side of the question. However, the pearls of legal wisdom contained in the opin- ions were of no interest to March or his lawyers. What interested them-or so it came to appear-was that the law- yers who had written the opinions were thereby ethically barred from appearing for BelgIum before the International Court, if Belgium should decide to bring the case. March, who had so often proved himself adept at pre- empting property and court proceed- ings, now seemed to be engaged in trying to preëmpt the legal talent of Western Europe. In the meantime, SOFINA and SIDRO were having trouble persuad- ing the Belgian government to take the case to The Hague court. For one thing, that nation's Socialist govern- ment had a marked distaste for de- fending the rights of one private enter- prise against another, in Spain or any- where else; for another, many of the Belgian civil servants simply weren't much interested in the complexities of high finance. March, never one to miss a chance to fish in troubled waters, had some of his agents buy small holdings of SIDRO in the open market and then attend SIDRO's annual meetings in Brussels as stockholders. At the 1956 and 195 7 meetings, after it had be- come public knowledge that SOFINA and SIDRO were trying to persuade the Belgian government to take the Barce- lona case to the International Court, a March representative virtually domi- nated the proceedings, making long speeches, the gist of which was that FECSA had bought Barcelona's assets fair and square at auction, that the BelgIan side would have no chance at The Hague, and that therefore the SIDRO management would be wanton- ly wasting the stockholders' money if it took the case there. In American corporate affairs, a mi- nority stockholder who attempted thus to dominate an annual meeting would be apt to find his microphone turned off, or find himself bodily removed, be- fore he was fairly started. Wilmers, presiding for SIDRO management, took encouragement from the cries of agony and rage from other stockholders that repeatedly interrupted the March men's filibusters, and evidently decided to let them run on. And he may have been right to do so. In the end, Bel- gium decIded to take the case to The Hague after all. On September 15,